wings and things
by kyouko
Summary: She is a bird with broken, bleeding, shattered wings. —rivaille/petra, oneshot. post episode 21.


**notes:  
**for _lyn_ (sumia) with love.  
subtle rivaille/petra. i wanted to like this ship, i really did.  
crossposted from ao3 _kyouko _and tumblr heichews.**  
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**wings and things  
**_she is a bird with broken, bleeding, shattered wings._

**_._**

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He's never been good at letting go.

He doesn't cry, he doesn't let his emotions take over when he sees their bodies; eyes open, blood still fresh on the ground. He doesn't close his eyes or freeze when he sees chunks of flesh missing and crusted gashes; green cloaks battered, bloodied and fluttering in the wind like fabric wings. There isn't a scream, not a gasp (because to be completely honest the shock wipes all words from his dry throat).

He doesn't stop. He is a solider with a steel-walled heart and if he can't protect himself, then who _can_ he protect?

He is a man who lives to kill and watch his comrades be killed, a man who knows death as well (or even better, perhaps) as his own name.

And then he finally stops (even steel walls crash and burn) because he sees her shattered body pressed to a tree, red tangled in her hair (he wonders what it would be like to run his fingers through it, just once) and dappled over her face like paint. His throat tightens; almost constricts around him as words nobody will hear struggle to leave his lips.

Rivaille's vision spins. Her hair, tinted like sunset, still blows in the breeze. Gold-brown eyes are startlingly open and if he didn't know better he'd think they were fixated on him.

He wants to fall (he has already) and wipe her face, ever so gently because it's _filthy _(she'd never allow that, she knew it bothered him so)and she just has a _nosebleed _(yes, that must be it) and the air is suddenly poignant with the smell of blood, so strong he can feel its tang on his tongue-

Or is that bleeding, too?

The finality of the situation hits him hard; a disgusting shock that starts in his ankles and spreads to his head until he's completely numb, and the numbness is worse than any injury he's felt before.

Everyone is gone. Just like that-insignificant pawns in a chess game, falling over one by one, leaving vermillion marks in their wake. There is an emptiness, an emptiness stronger than the vague sensation of pain; an emptiness that tugs at him and pulls him and rips him from the inside out. He feels hollow inside, like a carcass completely picked clean.

Death is a greedy thing that robs and robs and robs but is never content; it steals and claims and keeps and he wonders why he'd even bothered with something as fleeting as hope. His heart stops for a moment, a skipped beat in a lost melody.

He should have known-_should have known from the beginning-_because this world is cruel and merciless and so is the red thread of fate it hangs by.

(_inhale._)

He knows he needs to move; he needs to _go _because if death mesmerizes him for long enough, soon he will be pulled under, too. There's a brief moment of silence, a blankness in his ears that leaves them ringing and his throat is tight like there's a curtain of shadow descending on him, like he's drowning in a blackness that blinds him and numbs him and deafens him and suffocates him until he can't breathe, until his breath scratches desperately at his throat and -

(_exhale._)

Young, he thinks, she was still so young. She had her future laid out for her, a map in the stars, and yet a wrong turn leads her here. He's not dumb enough to really believe it's just a nosebleed, and he doesn't want to lift her cape and find the pieces underneath, bones shattered like glass (_glass chess pieces_).

And he wonders if he wears their blood on his hands, if it's something else he has to clean and scratch and burn until it's gone.

He thinks he does. If he'd never picked them in the first place, maybe they would be somewhere-he doesn't want to imagine them with their families, eyes bright and open instead of the dead blank looks that greet him from below.

She's a bird to him, something fragile and surreal with broken, bleeding wings, but he'll wait for the wings to heal no matter how many lifetimes it takes; he'll wait and die and grieve if it means seeing her fly again.

The wind kisses her hair. Her lips are open, just slightly, and he almost wants to see if there's any breath that will leave them. He thinks he'd like to go down and close her eyes, just to give her a proper goodnight (he's returning a favor, he tells himself) but he'd rather clear the path she can fly without every breaking her wings again.

She'll fly higher than he ever has.

He's never been good at letting go, but he does, because a bird can't fly if you keep it in your grasp forever.

(He knows this, perhaps, more than anyone else.)

* * *

_He dreams of something, of sunset and golden and red, and it makes his heart hurt and it causes a numbness to spread to the rest of his body like a disease. He dreams of wings, broken and bleeding and shattered and he awakens with cold sweat and an even colder emptiness settled in his heart. There is a hole that remains, and subconsciously he stitches it together._

_Just as fast as the dream comes, it leaves, laughing and twinkling. A growl dies in the back of his throat and leaves loneliness and patience behind (of which he has none). _

_School is a bore for him, and he pays it no interest-the only thing his mind seems to reel in and keep is the idea of a someone new, a new student stupid enough to transfer two weeks before summer vacation. He'd laugh if there wasn't a sick anticipation nestling in the bottom of his stomach._

_At sixteen he's quiet and withdrawn, waiting for something, following a makeshift map in the stars, a map he makes up as he goes along. Class is boring, and he finds his mind drifting to something else (his mind does nothing else, these days). _

_A pencil finds his way into his fingers, and he's drawing a pair of overlapping wings, wings that fill his heart with memories of sincere goodnights and left over futures and that irritating sunset color._

_The teacher has a voice that reminds him of nails on a chalkboard and he resists the urge to roll disinterested, steel grey eyes. A part of him feels more than hears soft footsteps. _

_"Here she is!" It sounds like a squeal to him. "Miss-"_

_He knows the name before it leaves the teacher's lips, he knows it before she walks into the room. He stands._

_Gold meets grey._

_"Petra Ral."_


End file.
